


Hotel California

by AppleScruff



Category: Jonas Brothers
Genre: F/M, For Halloween, Gen, Horror, may not have an happy ending
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-12
Updated: 2019-11-14
Packaged: 2020-12-13 19:35:38
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 10
Words: 8,524
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21003050
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AppleScruff/pseuds/AppleScruff
Summary: ‘This could be heaven or this could be Hell





	1. 1

Normally Joe and his brothers plan a trip before they go on it. Normally they decide where they are going, book a hotel in the city and pick out the sights they want to see. Normally everything is organized.

But for this trip they haven´t done any of these things. They had just been on a tour where everything was strict and organized, so they don´t want this trip to be. They just wanted to drive in their car and see where the road would take them.

It had been Joe´s idea, because he has always been a free spirit, but his brothers had eagerly agreed. They too wanted to feel the thrill of not knowing what was ahead of them. It would be a freedom all three of them had never experienced because neither of them had ever been on an unplanned trip before. It felt like an adventure into the unknown.

Their mother had made them promise to call her every few hours. She had always been a caring mother and her sons being away from home without knowing where they were had made her even more worried. She had made them promise multiple times to drive carefully and look out for each other. Denise knew her sons wouldn´t not look out for each other on purpose, she knew how close they were, but she was afraid they would be distracted by the novelty of the trip.

Kevin´s new wife, Danielle, is on the trip as well. Joe and Nick had known their sister-in-law would come along on the trip with them from the start because it had been obvious. Whenever Kevin goes somewhere, his wife comes with him. Both younger brothers cared for the sweet girl, so there had been no problem there.

Early in the morning they had put their luggage in Kevin’s car and had said their goodbyes to their mother and father. Kevin and Danielle had arrived the day before and had stayed the night so they could leave early.

They have been driving down the interstate all day long, stopping a few times to refuel but not staying too long because they didn’t want to be recognized. They loved their fans but the three brothers wanted peace and quiet during the trip, they wanted to forget they were pop stars during these few weeks.

The day is almost over and the sun is slowly making its way to the horizon. All the occupants of the car are tired and clammy from sitting in a car with a blazing sun heating them up like buns in an oven. The temperature is dropping, but the warm weather is still in their muscles.

The brothers and Danielle want to stop the car and check in at a hotel, but there’s a little problem. They’re still driving through the desert and there’s no hotel in sight. Joe had thought they would have reached a city or town by now but they haven’t. They haven’t seen one in a few hours and Joe doesn’t like it.

It isn’t that the middle brother is worried, they have enough gas in the tank for another six hours of driving. It’s more that he thinks it’s strange they’re still in the middle of nowhere even though they’ve been following the road for hours.

“Maybe I should have taken the other road after all,” Kevin jokes as the wipes his forehead with his sleeve. There isn’t any sweat on his forehead but the older brother does it out of force of habit.

“Maybe,” Joe admits with a sigh. He’s looking outside of his window at the dessert that passes him by. He tries to spot animals in the red sand, but he isn’t able to see any. The animals that hunt during the day are probably preparing themselves for sleep while the nocturnal animals are still immersed in it. “But it’s too late now. Now all we can do is keep driving.”

“We’re probably going to come across a town really soon,” Kevin tells his brothers and his wife, but because Joe knows his brother so well, he knows Kevin is saying this to convince himself as well. Kevin is as confused as everybody else.

As if fate as heard Kevin’s words, Joe suddenly sees something at the horizon and the gasps from the driver seat tells Joe that his brother has seen it as well.

“I think we found a town,” Kevin exclaims and Joe can see him smile through the rearview mirror. “Let’s hope they have an hotel.”

As the car moves along the shape at the horizon slowly grows bigger but it doesn’t take the shape they expected. As they drive on it becomes clear they’re not driving towards a town but towards a single building. It isn't clear what kind of building it is but Joe fears it isn’t an hotel. People don’t build hotels in the middle of nowhere.

But when they are finally close enough to read the neon sign next to the building Joe finds out it _is_ an hotel. For some reason someone thought it was an good idea to build an hotel along an interstate which almost nobody drives across. To everybody’s relieve beneath the name of the hotel there’s written in neon that there are vacancies. They can spend the night in Hotel California.

Kevin’s shoulders relax as he drives on towards the hotel, relieved that he doesn’t have to drive for another who-knows-how-many hours.

When the car drives unto the small parking lot in front of the hotel , a girl with thick brown hair and a short but athletic body is standing out front. She’s looking at the car with a smile that gives of such sadness that for some reason Joe’s heart skip a beat in fear. It is as if she’s happy that there are people visiting the hotel, but that it breaks her heart at the same time. It looks eerie.

Despite how unpleasant the girl makes Joe feel, he steps out of the car with the rest of his traveling companions. He’s probably just imagining things because he’s tired.

“Welcome to Hotel California,” the girl says with a smile as she walks towards the new arrivals. “My name is Maddie. How long will you be staying?”


	2. 2

When Kevin wakes up the next day he’s surprised to find out that he has never felt so well rested in his life. He’d had thought that his body would be sore after having sat behind the wheel all day, the day before. But he doesn’t feel any soreness or ache when he stretches his arms above his head, like he does every morning to fully wake up.

He puts his arms back down and his eyes travel from the white ceiling to his wife, who’s lying next to him. She’s still asleep and she looks content. It brings a smile to his face as he sees how relaxed hers is.

People have been quick to judge Danielle and it had always bothered Kevin immensely. They didn’t know anything about the girl he loved, but they still had an opinion about her. They said she married him for his money and fame when she barely spends the former and despised the later. When she had found out he was a pop star it had scared her off. She was a shy and fragile girl who had anxiety issues, so she knew the toll of his fame would be extra heavy on her.

But because she truly loved him and she did want to be with him, she did take a chance on him and on his fans. The majority of the fans had taken her into their hearts but some of them didn’t. The ones that didn’t told those awful things about her and it had pained Kevin to see how much it affected her even though she pretended to be strong.

Danielle’s eyelids flutter as she yawns, waking from her peaceful slumber. A smile turns up the corners of her lips as she sees her husband watching her.

“Did you sleep well?” Danielle asks with her soft voice. It isn’t the first time she caught Kevin staring, so she doesn’t comment on it. She knows why he does it.

“I slept really well. This bed is really soft.” Kevin turns on his side so his facing the brunette. “How did you sleep?”

“I slept well once I got to sleep.” A light frown slips on Danielle’s face. “There were some people walking around in the corridor while I tried to sleep. I heard the floorboards creak which made it difficult to fall asleep.”

“You should have asked them to be more quite, baby.” Danielle hates to be a bother, so she doesn’t tell people to stop when they do things that irritate her. “They probably didn’t know they were loud.”

“I know, I know,” Danielle says with a shrug of her shoulder. “But it doesn’t matter, I fell asleep eventually. There wasn’t any need for me to ask them to walk on their toes.”

“But did you get enough sleep?” Kevin insist. He doesn’t like it when people he cares about try to think of others before themselves when it isn’t necessary.

“Yes, I did, Kev. You don’t need to worry,” his wife says with a smile, caressing his face with her right hand because she knows it’ll make him relax. “I feel really well rested. There isn’t any tired muscle in my body.”

“If you’re sure…” Kevin trails of.

‘’ Yes, I am. Now, when was breakfast again?”

Kevin turns around so he can grab the phone that’s lying on the bedside drawer. He presses a button and the screen switches on.

“Breakfast is in fifteen minutes,” the curly-haired boy announces. He lays the phone back down and turns back towards his wife. “Joe and Nick won’t be up for at least half an hour. Do you want to go to breakfast already, or do you want to wait for my brothers?”

“We can wait for your brothers. I’m not that hungry.” Danielle scoots a little closer and warps her arms around Kevin’s waist. “We can cuddle while we wait.”

The young couple cuddle and exchange kisses while they wait on the two brothers. Both look content and happy because they feel safe and loved. They don’t know that at the end of the day they would feel anything but.

Joe and Nick wake up half an hour later, just like their older brother said they would and they get dressed before knocking on the door next to theirs. Only a few seconds later the door is opened and their brother tells them to enter.

“Did you guys find this brochure in your room?” the middle brother asks as he holds up the one he found and his and his younger brother’s room. “Apparently this hotel is really big and has all kinds of rooms. There’s a swimming pool, a gaming room, a sports hall; the list goes on and on.”

“That’s weird,” Danielle says with a frown on her face. The three brothers look at her confused because they don’t understand what it is that she finds weird. “Why would an hotel in the middle of nowhere have these kind of facilities?”

“I don’t know,” Joe says with a shrug of his shoulder. “But I like it. Kevin, do you think we could stay in the hotel for a couple of days?”

“I don’t see why not, unless Danielle doesn’t want to stay. Apparently they are people walking the corridors in the middle of the night. It kept her up.”

“Really?” Joe looks surprised. It seems he hadn’t heard the footsteps last night, much like Kevin. “I didn’t hear anything.”

“I don’t mind staying if the food is good,” Danielle tells the brothers with a smile. “Let’s find out.”


	3. 3

After breakfast they split up. Joe and Nick want to take a swim while Kevin and Danielle like to check out the game room. They want to find out if it´s a casino or if it´s a game room with more innocent games.

The brothers agree to meet up again in five hours, deeming it enough time to grow tired of swimming and playing games. Joe and Nick head back to their room because they´ve packed swim trunks just in case they’ll run into a lake they´d like to swim in.

It takes the two boys only ten minutes to change and they walk to the indoor pool with the rest of their clothes on because they´ve agreed that it would look weird if they walked through the hotel with only swim trunks on and a towel slung over their shoulder.

It doesn’t take them long to find the pool and they see that they’re not the only ones who had the idea to spend the day in and next to the water. People of all shapes and sizes are occupying the chairs around the pool and some of them are already in the water.

Most of the people wear normal swim wear but some of them wear bathing suits and bikinis that seem to belong in the 40’s or 60’s rather than the 21st century. The same goes for their hairstyles. It’s really weird and for some reason it makes Joe feel uncomfortable.

The two brothers sit down on chairs that are far away from the pool so they won’t be hit by water if someone decided to jump into the pool with a big splash.

Nick lays down with a sigh after he has put the back of his chair down and he runs a hand through his curls. “Finally time to relax. The tour was really great, but it really stressed out.”

“Yes, but it was great to see the fans again, wasn’t it?” Joe offers. He knows Nick loves the fans but from time to time Joe has to remind him – Nick sometimes have to do the same for Joe.

“True, but we were on tour for eight months.”

Last tour was the longest tour the Jonas Brothers were on in their four years as a group. They had taken two years of the pursue solo projects but the fans had waited patiently, so the brothers and their father agreed to go on a long tour to reward them for their patience. The tour had gone to Europe, America and Asia – they even went to South Africa. 

“One of them, we spent in Asia. We’ve never performed in Asia as the Jonas Brothers before. Didn’t you love the atmosphere in the Philippines?”

When Joe went on his solo tour he went to the Philippines and the country had acquired a piece of his heart. He had come back home with colorful and passionate stories and had told his father they should visit the former colony on the next Jonas Brothers’ tour.

“Yes, it was nice,” Nick admonishes with a sigh.

Meanwhile Nick and Joe’s older brother and his wife are in the game room. At first, it had looked like a casino, because all the games inside the room can be found in a casino as well, but after watching the other guests, they discovered that the machines didn’t need chips to come to life.

Kevin and Danielle stayed together while they tried out all of the games. Danielle had never been at a casino, while Kevin had been during his stag party. He hadn’t lost a lot of money because he’d known better. He may have a lot of money, but doesn’t mean he has to gamble it all away.

Kevin is playing the pin-ball machine when suddenly beautiful music begins the play. It’s violin music with a piano as its backbone. The oldest Jonas Brother is normally not into classical music, but something in the haunted melody tugs at his heartstrings. His hands leave the levers of the pin-ball machine and turns around to see were the melody is coming from.

Outside the window of the game room there’s a courtyard and in this courtyard he can see girl dance with flocks of boys surrounding her, dancing to the music as well.

The girl has brown hair that falls down in waves and hazel eyes that are hidden behind glasses. Her movements are fluid and sensual, but controlled at the same time. It is as if her body and the music are one. It’s a sight that makes it impossible to move his eyes away and robs him of his breath. It’s a mesmerizing.

“She does this every day,” a soft voice suddenly sounds from Kevin’s left and his eyes leave the dancing girl momentarily.

A girl with cherry red, wavy hair and green eyes look up at him with a look that is both happy and sad at the same time.

“Every day at the same hour, she dances in the courtyard with these boys – for some reason she calls them her boys. Nobody knows why she does it. You’re new, right?” 

“Yes, I am,” Kevin confirms and he turns his head to the dancing brunette again. “How long long have you been in the hotel?”

“I honestly don’t know,” is the surprising answer.


	4. 4

After the weird ‘performance’ in the courtyard of the hotel, Kevin and Danielle have had enough of the game room and decide to go to the restaurant to eat lunch. They still have two hours before they’re going to meet Joe and Nick, so they have time to have an extensive lunch.

Kevin is surprised at the many choices on the menu. You can order from the cuisine all around the world, from Italian cannelloni to Japanese sushi. There are even a few dishes from the African subcontinent. Kevin has never tried one of those, so he decides to eat one today.

Danielle orders lasagna, which the waiter standing at their table writes down with a smile. The man had appeared the moment they had lain their menus down, which is quite a feat because it’s rather busy in the restaurant.

Even though the game room was crowded as well, it comes only now to Kevin’s attention that a lot of people seem to have decided to stay in the hotel. This is a bit weird because as far as Kevin knows summer break is over, not to mention that the hotel is in the middle of nowhere.

He thinks back to the girl in the game room and what she said. She said she didn’t know how long she has stayed at the hotel, which is rather strange. Surely, you remember when you check into a hotel. Kevin would have liked to tell the girl just that, but she had disappeared again. He had looked away for only a minute but she had managed to disappear from the room.

Their food arrives quickly and the young couple digs in immediately. Kevin may not know how to pronounce the dish he’s eating, but he can taste how delicious it is. It consists of meat, some vegetables and bread and it’s a treat for his taste buds, especially the sweet meat.

“How does your lasagna taste?” Kevin asks his wife.

“It tastes really good, even better than my mother’s. Don’t tell her,” Danielle says with a chuckle. Her mother has always been proud of her lasagna and not without reason. Everybody loves her lasagna.

The young couple keeps talking while they eat their lunch. They discuss what they want to do for the next two days they’re staying at the hotel but because there’s so much to do, they come to the conclusion they have to skip a few things.

After they’re finished with their diner, they go back to their hotel room because that’s where they’re going to meet up with Nick and Joe. As they wait for Kevin’s brothers, he and Danielle lay down on the bed and cuddle while they continue their conversation.

Joe and Nick arrive an hour after the time they were supposed to meet up with their brother and his wife. Because they’re no concert or interview they need to go too, their older brother isn’t mad at their tardiness.

The four friends leave the room again after Joe and Nick have freshened up. They go to the fitness room because even though Danielle is on holiday, she still wants to do yoga and both Joe and Nick want to try it for the first time.

They sit down on four different mats just in time before the lesson begins. Because Nick and Joe haven’t done it before, it’s a beginners class.

When they’re finished, Danielle feels rejuvenated, like she always does after she has done yoga. Something about bending her body in odd angles brings her it to life.

They had planned to go to dinner together, but because Danielle and Kevin had a big lunch and Nick and Joe don’t really feel like eating, they decide to skip dinner. Instead, they watch a movie together.

Because Kevin has done a lot that day, that night he assumes he’ll get a good night’s sleep because he always does after a busy day. He never had a problem with falling asleep after a concert, even with the adrenaline that rushes through his body on those nights.

For most of the night, he does sleep undisturbed, but in the middle of the night he’s rudely awoken by a scream. It’s a scream that sounds like nails on a chalkboard and the oldest brother jumps awake with a heart that’s beating rapidly. The hairs on the back of his neck stand up as the room suddenly seems really cold.

“What was that?” is the whispered question coming from Kevin’s left, the tremor in his wife’s soft voice indicated she’s as scared as he is.


	5. 5

Joe hasn´t slept a wink because he kept waking up from screams that had seemed to come from nowhere and everywhere at once. The screams had cut through his bones and heart and it had felt as if he had landed in hell, because surely that was how tormented souls sounded.

The screams had woken Nick as well and he had been glad he did because it meant he wasn´t hearing things. That there really were people screaming in agony.

If the screams hadn´t come from everywhere Joe would have thought that someone was being murdered and he would have called the police. But because it did he didn´t know what to think. Could it be that a ghost was haunting the hallways?

Ghost has always been something Joe believed in – he has gone through too many weird things not to, but he has never been afraid of them. He believed that they were just people who couldn’t move on but that they were harmless.

Maybe the screams were harmless too. Maybe the ghost was just in a lot of pain and could only vent that pain by screaming. Nick shook his head because he may believe in aliens, but he didn’t believe in ghosts.

They had talked the whole night through about who was screaming if it wasn’t a ghost. Nick hadn’t been able to give Joe a satisfactory alternative – in Joe’s opinion.

The screams had stopped when the sun had come up and the two brothers used the two hours left until breakfast to catch up on sleep.

Kevin and Danielle had heard the screams as well and had gotten as little sleep as Joe and Nick. Joe told Kevin and his wife that he thought that it may have been a ghost who produced the terrible sounds. Unlike Nick, Kevin had given his younger brother’s idea a thought.

Danielle had asked with bags under her eyes if Joe may know a way to convince the ghost to stop screaming, knowing the middle brother had become quite an expert on the supernatural.

Before Joe could answer his sister-in-law’s question, someone had bumped into him. The girl had apologized with such exasperation that Joe had smiled at her. She had looked cute with her red, curly hair and green eyes that peeked from behind a fringe. She told them her name was Tilly after Joe had asked her to.

The girl had looked at him strangly and had asked him if he was new in the hotel, like people ask in high school when they don’t recognize your face. Joe had found it a weird question, but he had answered her in the positive. She had answered him in the negative when he had asked her the same question and for some reason this had bothered Joe’s older brother a lot.

Joe had asked Tilly if she had heard the screams at night as well, but once again she answered in the negative. She told them she hadn’t heard screams in the hotel for a long time.

After the girl had left, Kevin told his wife and his brothers that he didn’t think that it was a good idea to stay. Weird things were happening and he had a feeling they might be dark as well.

But Joe had wanted none of it. Despite the screams, he was having a great time at the hotel and he didn’t want to leave until the three days they planned to stay were over. He had promised to look for the ghost and maybe talk to him but they weren’t leaving.

Joe had sounded brave then but now he’s anything but. The way the screams sounded is still fresh in his memories now that he’s walking through the many corridors alone. Sometimes a guest of the hotel passes him, but most of the time he’s alone – at least, when it comes to humans because he can feel eyes burn into him.

Kevin had wanted to go with Joe, because he didn’t want his younger brother to go alone, no matter that he thought the ghosts were harmless. Joe had refused because he needed to do it alone. Kevin was still a skeptic and ghosts don’t deal well with those.

So, Joe is all alone and in search for a ghost. A ghost he believes to be peaceful, but who’s dealing with a lot of pain. He just hopes he’ll find the ghost soon and just be done with it.


	6. 6

At first Joe isn´t sure whether he had heard voices or if it´s just the wind blowing around the hotel, or maybe it´s his mind playing tricks on him. The sound is soft and it doesn´t seem to consist of words.

But then he hears it a second time and this time he´s sure it´s a human voice. It´s the voice of a man and it seems to be coming closer.

Fear takes a sudden chokehold on the middle Jonas Brother, causing the flashlight in his hand to make creepy shadows on the walls.

For some reason the corridor had become darker how further away he was from the main halls, so he had to start using the flashlight earlier then he had anticipated – it’s only three PM.

Joe hadn’t turned around when he discovered the degrading of the light because it was clear that the rooms lining that part of the corridor weren’t used anymore, which meant the ghost was most likely there. Most people don’t want to sleep in haunted rooms ergo the room the ghost resides in is most likely abandoned. 

Looking around for somewhere to hide, Joe discovers there’s nothing there for him to hide behind. Well, there goes that part of the plan. He had wanted to hide behind a plant or some other large furniture to watch the ghost before approaching them, but now he can’t. He has to come up with something else.

Suddenly he hears a male shout something in French from behind the door only a few feet away from the young man and he lets out an unflattering yelp that makes him both blush from embarrassment and the fear of discovery.

But the ghost doesn’t appear to have heard him because it goes in rambling. Joe has learned some French words when he was still in school but he can’t understand a word from what the supernatural being is saying.

Joe takes a deep breath and tries to stop his arm from shaking. He doesn’t understand why he’s so nervous because he does believe that all ghosts are friendly. Maybe it’s because he’s facing a situation not many people have been in before. Could it have been better after all if he had let his brothers come along?

Well, it’s too late for Joe to worry about if he has done things wrong because he most likely has found the ghost. He hasn’t come across one of the guests for an hour and there’s no light on in the room the voice is coming from. The French is probably an old version of the language, the kind the ghost spoke when he was still alive.

With shaky knees and still trembling hands, Joe walks to the door and after having taken another deep breath he opens it. He shines with his torch in the room but to his surprise he doesn’t see anyone in the room. There’s neither a human nor a ghost in the room.

Most people may think that the ghost is most probably just invisible because isn’t that what ghost almost always are unless they want to be seen but Joe knows better. Ghosts are never invisible, they’re see-through and because of that difficult to spot, but they’re never invisible.

Because he really wants to know where the voice came from, Joe walks into the room but that’s something he shouldn’t have done. He has only taken one step into the room when suddenly a cold shower seem to have fallen down on him. It feels as if he’s taken a deep plunge into ice water and this feeling is accompanied by a pain that spreads throughout his body like forest fire and feels like million gigantic needles stabbing into his skin and muscles. He has never felt such excruciating pain.

Joe falls to his knees because they can’t support him anymore due to the pain. He doesn’t want to scream but he knows he has too because it will ease the pain just a little. It’s not as if his brothers are any of the other guests can hear him.

Just as sudden as the pain had started, it disappears again. One minute Joe is laying on the ground, white hot pain shooting through his body and the next minute it’s gone. His body unclenches and tears begin to flow from his eyes.

He hadn’t known ghosts did these kind of things. He had been unprepared and because of this he has failed. He wanted to talk to the ghost, ask him if he could keep his wailing and screaming down. Hell, he had even hoped he could put the spirit to rest. But now the ghost has gone and it seems to be angry – because why else would he do what he had done to Joe?

He isn’t going to tell his brothers and Danielle what has happened because he doesn’t want them to know he has failed. They’ll be leaving the next day anyway.


	7. 7

After his unsuccessful ghost hunt, Joe returns to his and Nick´s room. He waited until he was sure his eyes weren´t red from crying anymore before returning, of course, because he doesn´t want his brothers to know things went wrong. He doesn´t want them to worry.

So, when he returns to the room he does have a frown on his face but he doesn´t look frightened. His brothers don´t ask what happened, just if he was successful. He answers in the negative and his brothers and Danielle do look frightened but not terrified, like they would if they knew the ghost had hurt Joe.

“So, are you sure you didn´t see any ghosts?” Danielle asks because it’s clear she wants him not to be.

“I’m afraid not, Dani,” Joe lies and he really doesn’t like doing so. “I’ve checked all hallways and rooms – and I tell you, there’re a lot of them – but no, I didn’t see any spirits.”

“I don’t know if I should feel relieved or not,” Nick says with a sigh and he runs a hand through his short curls. “I mean I’m happy the hotel isn’t hunted, but we don’t know what is making the noises instead.”

“Not to mention we’re going to hear them most likely again tonight,” contributes the wife of Joe’s other brother.

“We’re happy your safe of course,” Kevin tells Joe with a small smile and he pulls him into a hug because he can see that the complaints are bothering him.

Joe understands that Danielle and Nick are disappointed he didn’t find any ghosts but he would have appreciated it if they had thanked him for his effort. All they did when he walked in was asking if he was successful or not.

“But hey, we’re only staying one more night,” says Joe with a small smile because he wants to remind the others as well as himself that things aren’t as bad as they appear. He always looks at the positive side of things because he’s of the opinion that only looking at the negative side won’t get you far.

Suddenly, there’s a knock on the door and all the occupants in the room jump at the sudden sound. They don’t know anybody in the hotel – aside from the girl who talked to Kevin yesterday but she doesn’t know in which room they’re staying – and they haven’t ordered any room service, so who the hell could be at the door?

Because nobody makes a move to open the door Joe decides he’s going to get it. He takes a deep breath to calm his nerves and walks to the door. Because characters in movies don’t do this and always get killed because of it, Joe asks who’s at the door before he even thinks about opening the door. The encounter with the ghost has really shaken him up.

“It’s Maddie.” The female voice sounds muffled because of the wood of the door. “I was the girl who welcomed you and your brothers to the hotel. I would like to invite you to a dinner.”

Partly because he knows he has nothing the fear of the friendly, slightly mysterious, brunette and partly because he’s curious which dinner she’s referring to, Joe opened the door.

Maddie smiles sweetly at him as he asks “Which dinner are you talking about?”

“A dinner all the guests are invited to after their first night at the hotel,” the girl explains. She hands him four envelops with the names of him and his brothers on it. There’s one addressed to Danielle as well. “All the other guests are going too and there’ll be lots of entertainment before and while you eat.”

Joe takes the invitations from Maddie and when their fingers touch Joe almost recoils because the girl’s hands are really cold, like ice. How the hell did they get so cold? It’s not as if they have gone cold because Maddie went outside because it’s the middle of the summer.

“What kind of entertainment,” Nick asks while he walks towards his older brother and the petit brunette. The last part of the conversation seems to have peaked his interest.

“There’s a dance that will be performed in which the guests can participate if they like and a play will be performed while you eat.”

The dinner sounds interesting but Joe would rather stay in the room and order room service. He really doesn’t feel like interacting with strangers at the moment. He still feels shaky from his ghost encounter even though he doesn’t appear to be on the outside.

But he doesn’t know whether his brothers want to go to the dinner or not, so he turns his head and asks, “Do you guys want to go?”

Before the others can answer, Maddie says “You don’t have to tell me if you’re going or not. Just read the invitations and think about it.”

That’s what they do after she has left and because only Joe wants to stay in the room, they decide to go to the dinner.

When they arrive a lot of the guests are already inside the ball room. The room is decorated in a Victorian style, with chandeliers with candles hanging from the ceiling and hearths with roaring fires.

Just like promised, before dinner is served, a dance is performed and when Kevin sees who’s dancing in the center of the moving bodies he lets out a gasp of surprise and tell his brothers that the main dancer is the girl who he told them about, the one who was dancing in the court yesterday.

The shock of this realization doesn’t stop Joe’s older brother from saying yes when one of the dancers asks him and his wife to join them. He just stands up and begins to dance with Danielle.

They don’t dance long and when they’re finished they return to the table. Kevin tells Joe he and Nick should dance too because it was really fun. So much fun even, that he doesn’t really feel like leaving tomorrow.

Joe protests of course because he wants to leave as soon as possible. He reminds his older brother and his wife about the screams but Kevin just shrugs his shoulder and tells Joe that he worries too much. They’re just screams. It’s not as if someone is being killed.

Because Joe can’t believe the sudden change in his brother’s opinion he turns to his younger brother for help but the words die in his mouth when he sees Nick drink from a glass filled with a red liquid. It looks so much like blood that a violent shudder runs through his body.

When Nick sees him watching, he smiles at his older brother and his teeth look like a vampire’s because they’re stained red by the blood-like beverage. Joe almost throws up at the sight.

Joe is really scared so he grips his brother by both his arms and asks him what the hell he’s drinking. Nick tells him he’s drinking wine and asks why he’s acting so weird.

How can Nick not see that what he’s drinking is most definitely not wine?!

Before Joe can say as much, the music suddenly stops and someone yells, “They’ve released the beast.” Apparently it’s the cue for the guests to grab their knives and both Nick and Kevin and Danielle follow their example.

Joe wants to ask his brothers what they’re doing but he doesn’t get the chance to when a pig the size of a mature bear suddenly runs through the doors and into the room.

Like a gigantic human wave, the guests dive for the pig and amongst the people chasing the animal and trying to stab it with their knives are Danielle, Kevin and Nick.


	8. 8

Joe screams as he wakes up in cold sweat. The bed sheet clings to his bare torso as he tries to calm his rapidly beating hard and raged breathing.

His head shoots to his right because his nightmare had involved Nick and he wants to check if his younger brother is still there. He wants to know if his brother hasn´t been taken by the hotel, like he was in his dream.

Nick is still there. He´s sleeping peacefully and he has a serene look on his face. The Nick in his dream had a peaceful look on his face as well, but there had been something haunted about that look. It had scared Joe shitless. But the look Nick has on his face now doesn´t have an eerie side.

While he closes his eyes, Joe lays back down again and takes a deep breath. His dream had been so real. It had been as if that awful dinner really had happened. It was as if he and his brothers really went to that old-fashioned ballroom and his brothers had chased a pig down with forks. Joe would have thought it wasn’t a dream, or rather a nightmare, if it wasn’t for him knowing his brothers would never take part in something that macabre. Besides, he can’t remember how he went from running from the ball room to sleeping in his bed; which is a big indicator it was a dream.

For some reason Joe can feel wetness brim at the corners of his eyes and he quickly wipes the moisture away with his thumb and pointer finger. Why is he crying? Did his dream really scare him that much?

But Joe knows the dream is not the only reason he feels like crying. The encounter with the ghost has shaken him up badly and having a dream like the one he just had only makes the fear pressed up in his chest expand even further.

Maybe he should have told about what had happened to him because maybe he’d be staying in a different hotel at the moment instead of having to spend another day in this horrible hotel. He should have sucked-up his pride and told them.

Suddenly the door is opened and Joe opens his eyes wide without thinking. His eyes all but burn out of their sockets when the hall light hits his blurry eyes. He immediately closes them again even though he hasn’t seen who the person is who has opened the door. 

That silent question is answered when that person starts to talk. It’s Kevin and he sounds too chirpy for this early in the morning. “Me and Dani are going to have breakfast. Are you coming?”

“What time is it?” Joe murmurs with his eyes still closed. His head aches a bit, so he rubs his forehead to get rid of it.

“It’s eight o’clock,” Kevin answers and Joe can hear him move. “It’s not that early. Are you coming?” Joe’s older brother’s voice sounds uncharacteristically impatient, so he opens his eyes to look at the curly-haired boy with eyebrows furrowed in confusion.

“What has eaten your sock?” Joe asks. He knows this isn’t a real saying but he has always liked to make some up himself. He knows it’s weird, but his brain is wired that way.

“Nothing, we just want to have an early breakfast,” Kevin throws back and Joe can hear by his voice he doesn’t want him to asks him anymore questions.

“Alright,” Joe says with a sigh and he runs a hand down his face. “I’ll dress and then I’ll join you and Dani for breakfast.”

Now that Kevin has gotten his answer, he leaves the room again and Joe dresses himself. Because he has done something mundane, he feels a little less shaky when he joins his brother and his wife for breakfast. He hasn’t asked his younger brother if he wanted to join them because he had seen that Nick was fast asleep, so he didn’t wake him.

Both Kevin and Danielle are all smiles and their cheerful behavior make him feel more relaxed and at ease until they start talking about what they’re going to do in the hotel that day.

With a rapidly beating heart and a bad feeling in his gut Joe reminds them that they’re leaving the hotel today and he gets a respond that surprises and scares him.

They tell him they don’t see a reason to leave the hotel that day, or any day for that matter. They have all they need at the hotel. Why would they ever want to leave? There’s nothing for them outside.


	9. 9

Joe would never have thought he would think his brother has lost his mind but that´s exactly what he thinks after his older sibling has told him he wants to stay in the hotel forever. He seems to have forgotten they have a family, friends and fans to return to because he had told Joe that they don´t have anything to return to outside the hotel. When he reminds his brother and his wife of them, they tell him that if these people want to see them, they just have to come to the hotel as they not going to leave.

It´s then that Joe decides that he needs to wake Nick. Maybe his younger brother can help him make sense of what has happened to Kevin. Nick is always the levelheaded brother who comes up with the logical explanations.

However, when Joe enters the hotel room his shares with his brother, he discovers that his brother´s bed is empty. Nick has come out of bed but not because he wanted to eat breakfast because otherwise he and Joe would have crossed paths. But what could be the reason than that the bed is empty?

Panic gets an even stronger hold on Joe because on top of his brother having abandoned all reason, his younger brother has disappeared as well. What the hell is going on?!

Joe rushes out of the room again and begins to run down the corridors in search for his brother. He of course first checks the game rooms because it’s maybe possible that Nick wanted to play a game before he went to eat breakfast. Nick is not in the game room.

The pool and the library are next but Nick is not in those either. Then Nick had to be wondering around the sleeping part of the hotel and this alarms Joe because it doesn’t make sense. Why would he walk the corridors of the sleeping quarters? There is nothing interesting there. What if Nick for some reason is in the same state as Kevin and has lost his sanity?

This terrifying thought spurs him on as he runs through the corridors of the hotel. He doesn’t apologize when he knocks people over in his haste and it earns him both angry words and angry looks. But he doesn’t care for the first time in his life, because he needs to find Nick.

Joe sometimes thinks he hears his younger brother’s voice but every time he walks into a room where he heard the noise, there is no Nick.

Could it be that his dream hadn’t been a dream after all and that that horrible night really did happen? What if Kevin really had danced with Danielle that dance with the group of girls? Could it be that it had brainwashed him somehow? Make him forget there was a life outside the hotel.

Two days ago, this idea would have sounded crazy to Joe, but these past few days strange things have happened around the hotel – angry ghosts screaming and attacking, guests who don’t seem to remember when they checked in at the hotel and brothers not wanting to return to their families and rock star lives.

If the dinner hadn’t been a nightmare, it means Kevin and Nick chasing pig with forks during dinner last night wasn’t either. The thought makes Joe stops dead in his tracks and suck in a breath in ice- cold shock. Nick had enjoyed the hunt from hell just as much as Kevin did. This would mean that whatever happened to Kevin must have happened to his younger brother as well.


	10. 10

The whole day Joe has searched the hallways for his brother but he hasn’t managed to find him. He had walked down every hallway trice in the hope they missed each other the last time but it had been in vain. His brother seemed to have gone up into thin air.

Joe doesn´t know what to do. He has exhausted all the possible places Nick can be. What can he do now? Should he stop searching?

He immediately admonishes himself. Of course he can’t stop searching for his younger brother. He might have lost his mind like Kevin and it’s Joe’s duty as older brother to snap him out of it. But how can he find him?

With both hands in his hair, Joe stops pacing the bedroom he and Nick share. He had gone back to the room because he had hoped his baby brother might have returned while Joe had roamed the rest of the hotel.

Joe has never felt so helpless and alone. There’s no one he can ask for help, not his brother nor anyone of the hotel staff. The former is under the influence of the hotel and the latter works for it. He’s all on his own, if he wants to find his brother.

Suddenly Nick’s voice sounds from behind the door to the hallway and Joe moves to open the door, hope blooming warmly in his chest but he immediately stops all movement when he hears another voice which chills him to the bone. Something in the deep voice sounds like pure evil.

Joe doesn’t really think when he dives under the bed when the door opens. It’s his instincts that take over. All he can feel is the urgent need to not be visible when the owner of the cold voice is in the room. His survival instinct tells him to hide from the view of the hunter.

“Are you sure you’re up for it?” the man with the evil voice asks.

“I‘m sure. I would do anything for you, my master,” Nick reassures with an submissive voice Joe has never heard him use ever before. Nick doesn’t do submissive, none of the brothers do, but especially Nick.

And Nick calls him Master. What kind of sick joke is this. Has the wine at the dinner brainwashed his brother or something? Has it made him do anything for this weirdo with the creepy voice?

Protective brother instincts take over and makes Joe forget for a moment that he’s afraid of the creep, as he wiggles out from under the bed and stands up to tell the stranger just what he thinks about what he’s doing to his brother.

But all words die on his tongue as he lays his eyes on Nick’s new master. It seems the voice fits perfectly with the person. There are no words to describe what a frightening sight this creature – because it surely isn’t human – is.

Joe loses all sensible thought as the creature looks at him, all he can do is scream, scream and run. He has forgotten about his brothers and his sister-in-law because all he can think about is his own survival.

The girl behind the desk has brown hair with friendly, brown eyes and a name tag that reads L. Nolen and she smiles at Joe when he steadies himself on the wooden object.

The smile however disappears when he tells her with tears streaming down his face that he wants to check out of the hotel.

“Sir, you can check-in any time you like, but you can never leave.”


End file.
